Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf senior leader Dr Arif Alvi on Thursday said the party should apologise to all concerned after his party chairman Imran Khan termed the allegation of ’35 punctures’ a political statement during a TV interview on Wednesday.
After the party chairman’s interview to Geo News anchor Hamid Mir, PTI leader Naeemul Haque tweeted: “Of course the 35 puncture story was political but also correct. Let Najam Sethi, Murtaza Poya,Dr Ijaz and US Ambassador come on TV on this.”
Commenting on the issue, Dr Alvi tweeted that it was “time to apologise for 35 punctures. Many rumours regarding source of information and content were afloat and I believed some of them.”
“Naeem-ul-Haque believes the 35 puncture story is correct and he has some source of direct information which I don’t,” Dr Arif Alvi said in a following tweet.
When an observer asked Dr Alvi and Naeemul Haque to pick up the phone and sort their versions out, Dr Alvi tweeted saying: “Actually we picked up the phone and talked about it. Mr @naeemul_haque has the info but I don’t.”
PTI Secretary General Jahangir Tareen rejected Dr Alvi’s apologetic remarks, saying they might have been his (Dr Alvi’s) own point of view.
Speaking to journalists, Tareen said the party would not apologise and added that there were 71 punctures and not just 35.
The issue of ’35 punctures’ came to light in Feb 2014 after a PTI leader tweeted on the matter, followed by others.
The tweets alleged that on the night of May 13, 2013, Najam Sethi had called Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif and had assured him that the “35 punctures” had been fixed.
PTI leaders had at the time said that the information had come from an envoy associated with the US government.